


The True Size of Your Own Heart

by maskingtape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Angst, Awkward Tension, Bounty Hunters, Friendship, Gen, Outer Rim Territories (Star Wars), Post-Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26134186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maskingtape/pseuds/maskingtape
Summary: Cara pats her blaster and her knife. “Is this about tomorrow? Because I don’t see us having to force doctors at gunpoint. For once, violence may not be necessary.”“Unnatural,” Din shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”She grins and keeps scrolling. What they’re attempting is not so much a holdup as a heist—except that their goal is to get the valuable object into a very special room, and the success of the mission mostly hinges on their ability to fill out paperwork convincingly.Cara and Din team up to rescue a group of stranded Mandalorians, but when a clash over strategy reveals deeper differences, what will it do to their friendship?
Relationships: Cara Dune & The Mandalorian (The Mandalorian TV)
Comments: 23
Kudos: 51





	1. Opportunity knocks

The first time Cara hears the voice, it’s a hiss. “Ad’ika, k’olar!”

Her head jerks up. She scans her surroundings but the alleyway is empty.

“Ad’ika ...” The voice has gotten sterner but it has a panicked edge.

That word … she’s heard Din say it to his kid, she’s almost sure of it. _Are there Mandalorians on this planet?_

Suddenly, a child dashes across her line of sight—a blur of arms and legs and light hair and loose clothing. The trajectory is purposeful, as if the kid had launched themselves in a desperate volley towards the voice. Cara starts to follow, but she tamps down the instinct. Chasing him would only make her seem like a predator. Worse, she might find herself facing the business end of a blaster held by somebody she has no intention of harming. Instead, she walks back towards where the child had come from. Just another dark alleyway. No, wait—there are a few signs of a scuffle. On the ground, almost hidden in the dirt, Cara sees a curved piece of metal. She picks it up.

A pauldron.

Chipped green paint, but there’s no mistaking the metal. Beskar.

Adorned with a raised pattern—a signet of some sort, probably.

Ordinarily, Cara would have assumed that a Mandalorian bounty hunter had gotten careless or unlucky with his armor. But the presence of the child gives her pause. What kind of hunter would endanger their foundling by bringing them along on a violent hunt? As far as she knows, Mandalorian children are fiercely protected by the community that raises them. _Does Din know there might be a covert here?_

As soon as Cara returns to Nevarro, she heads to Greef’s office to make use of the long-range holotransmitter. Knowing just how paranoid Din is that any information about his people might be intercepted, she takes a minute to think through the wording before she starts recording her message.

Holding up the beskar pauldron, making sure its signet is visible, Cara says: _“I was offworld yesterday when I found this in an alleyway. I’m wondering if this belongs to a friend of yours. Someone who has a young kid with them? It’s possible that they moved to that planet recently and forgot to tell you. Anyway, they’re probably worried sick about losing this. Remind me to give this to you the next time you visit, so that you can arrange to return it to them.”_

She encrypts the message and sends it off.

Within an hour, she receives a reply: “ _Will stop by Nevarro in a few days."_

The next afternoon, as Cara shoves an unruly hunter into the cantina, she sees Greef at the corner booth, motioning her over. She nods, but first signals the bartender to pull a pint of ale. “Hey, who’s the Rodian sitting with Greef?” she asks.

The bartender shrugs. “Dunno. She’s not dressed like a hunter, that’s for sure.”

Cara grabs her drink and walks over to the booth.

“And this is my very able enforcer,” Greef says grandly. “Pull up a chair. I wanted to introduce you to my associate, Qoo. In a previous life, she and I sat on the same circuit court.” This catches Cara’s interest—he never talks about his previous career as a magistrate. “Qoo joined the Bounty Guild around the same time I did, but now she’s deputy guildmaster for the Outer Rim Territories.”

“That would make you Greef’s boss, wouldn’t it?” Cara says.

The Rodian greets her with an open-palmed hand across the chest and a slight nod. “In the sense that I relay Guild directives to him from Scipio, and he mostly ignores me, then yes—I’m his boss.” Her voice is dryly amused. Greef splutters in protest.

“I was on Scipio just a few days ago,” Cara offers. “Caught a glance of the Guild headquarters from the outside. It was larger than I expected.”

“It took a few years for us to rebuild after all that unpleasantness caused by that bomb-thrower Fett,” Qoo makes a dismissive wave with her hand, “but we’re on a strong footing again. Growing by leaps and bounds, in fact.”

“Let me guess,” Cara says. “Business is good because more courts are being established in the Outer Rim. More courts, more bail, more bail jumpers.”

To her surprise, Greef starts chuckling.

Qoo corrects her. “Actually, our revenue declines on planets that have strong law enforcement. The Guild has a vested interest in Outer Rim planets _not_ establishing stable governments.” She goes on to explain that much of the Guild’s funding comes from cartels and syndicates that have historically been aligned with anti-government actors.

Cara’s eyes narrow. “You’re not saying that the Guild overthrows regimes?”

“Cara!” Greef looks up at the ceiling and shakes his head with grave disappointment. “Cara …”

Qoo smiles enigmatically. “Oh, we wouldn’t dare. We merely have a powerful lobbying arm in the New Republic Senate. Though I personally do believe that a regime that cannot weather small failures does not deserve the loyalty of its subjects.”

Cara closes her mouth and swirls her glass of ale. She needs a minute to absorb all this.

“You did dangerous work during the war,” Qoo notes, nodding at the stripes on Cara’s bicep. “Very clever of you to survive.”

A retort rises to Cara’s lips but Qoo keeps talking: “Luck played its part, I’m sure, but a dropper squadron is no place for fools.”

“You’ve met other ex-shock troopers?” Cara asks, her interest piqued.

“There are a few in the Guild, and I wish we had more,” Qoo replies. “Needless to say, they all excel at retrieval. But I honestly think their talents are wasted in the field. Shock troopers are trained to be problem-solvers, and even the most recalcitrant fugitive is—in the grand scheme of things—a small problem. As I mentioned earlier, the Guild plays on a larger field.”

Greef leans in with a confiding air. “I was telling Qoo here about how you seem bored with your role as my enforcer.”

A wary look comes over Cara’s face. “I haven’t complained.”

“It’s obvious that you’re looking for something more,” he replies. His tone is still avuncular, which _probably_ means he’s not about to fire her.

“There’s an opening for a Guild Courier,” Qoo explains. “We call them couriers, but they act a bit like bailiffs. They oversee security on the interstellar freight runs, and help load and unload acquisitions at the hub and spoke ports. Ten delivery trips per month are required to maintain your status. If you have time left over and want to take a hunting gig or two, that’s up to you.”

Cara chews at her lip. She likes Qoo’s no-nonsense manner. “How fast could I get licensed?”

“The cogs of bureaucracy move at their own pace, but I can expedite it. You could probably start next week.”

On the other side of the room, two inebriated hunters are snarling and jabbing at each other. With a sigh, Cara excuses herself to go break up the fight.

When she comes back, she has a question for Qoo: “So what’s the deal with all the wildcard hunting jobs in the queue?” Sometimes Greef has her scan the Guild listings to make sure he’s not overlooking any plum gigs for his best hunters. Cara had quickly learned that the commissions from courts and collections agencies are snapped up right away. On the other hand, the bids placed by individual clients unaffiliated with any official institution tend to vary widely in quality—and are riskier in general. “Some bounty descriptions sound more like sob stories than legit gigs,” she says, “but it’s wild how much those clients will offer to pay for their quarry. Are those payouts even real?”

It’s a simple question. As a high-ranking bureaucrat, Qoo obviously knows whether the Guild has a problem with spoof bounties or clients who refuse to pay up. But the deputy guildmaster pauses before she answers. “There’s a Rodian word that is very difficult to translate into Basic,” Qoo says slowly. “It refers to any question where the answer exists—definitively, quantifiably exists—but the amount of effort required to uncover that answer makes it unfeasible.”

Greef rubs his hands with relish, as if eager to rehash an old topic.

“’Unknown knowables’? ‘Unknowable truths’?” Qoo shakes her head. “As I said, untranslatable.” Looking at the perplexed expression on Cara’s face, she laughs. “I’ll give you an example: How many habitable planets and moons are there in Wild Space? The fact that we don’t know the exact number doesn’t mean there _isn’t_ an actual number. You could send pilots out to find out, but you’d run out of fuel long before they mapped a quarter of the area. It’s knowable but not worth the cost.”

“Seems very theoretical,” Cara replies. Abstractions tire her out.

“It needn’t be. I could just as easily point to our biological organisms. How many hairs do you have on your head? What is the precise weight of your living brain?”

Cara smiles politely. “No offense, but these sound like riddles. Still not sure how all this relates to my question.”

“Just hold on,” says Greef, holding up a finger. "You lost your knife last week.”

True. It was her favorite blade—perfectly balanced, with a grip as comfortable as a handshake. She had griped about the loss for days.

He goes on: “Maybe you misplaced it, maybe somebody nicked it. But it didn’t dematerialize. Right now that knife exists _somewhere_. You just don’t know where.”

Qoo eyes her. “Do you see now how this relates to Guild work?”

Cara does, suddenly. The words emerge slowly but steadily. “The location of a fugitive is one of these … unknowable knowns. And clients think it’s worth the trouble to find the answer to that question."

“Exactly. Clients pay us to solve very expensive riddles. They’ve been careless by misplacing somebody in their custody, and that can be a source of embarrassment and anger. So they must reclaim what’s been taken from them—the quarry, yes, but also their dignity. For that, they will spare no effort or expense.”

An unexpected image flashes into Cara’s head: a bright cloudless morning, the street right outside this cantina, Moff Gideon flanked by spotless black and white armor, demanding the return of a child that he viewed as his property.

That Imp’s unknowable motives had brought her to Nevarro—and indirectly freed _her_ from the life of a fugitive.

Suddenly, she misses Din and the kid. She wonders when they’ll arrive.

Qoo excuses herself to send an urgent holo to a colleague. As she hurries off, Cara and Greef watch a Trandoshan bounty hunter walk in, escorting his quarry. Despite being in binders, the fugitive is draped all over the hunter, looking at him longingly.

“That’s the third one this month,” Greef marvels.

Gesturing at the odd pair, Cara grins. “I wonder how many hunters have ever let a quarry escape in exchange for sex. Maybe that’s another unknowable riddle. The number’s gotta be pretty high, but there’s no way of knowing the exact—”

“It’s 100 percent,” Greef says placidly.

“Excuse me?”

“They’ve all done it,” he sighs. “Trust me, I know my hunters.”

Cara slumps back, oddly disgruntled. And she’d thought _she_ was cynical. “Well, I haven’t.”

“Not yet. You’re still new.”

He seems so sure of himself, and she won’t have it. “No, wait. That hunter, whatshername ... Kn’t’b … I bet she hasn’t either. Her species lays eggs, right?”

Greef wags his finger at her. “Oviparous doesn’t mean asexual, Cara. Shame on you. Actually, shame on Kn’t’b. She’s one of the worst when it comes to letting herself be seduced by fugitives. That’s why I stopped giving her pucks. She can damn well find her own one-night stands in the Guild gigs queue.”

Qoo, who has returned to the table, laughs quietly. “There’s a reason the Bounty Hunters Code doesn’t explicitly prohibit these kinds of transactions. Why include a law that’s impossible to enforce?”

Cara tosses back the dregs in her glass as she stands up. “You two have managed to make me feel like a wide-eyed innocent.”

“Biological urges make fools of us all,” Greef declares to no one in particular.

“It was nice to meet you, Qoo.” Cara offers a firm handshake. “Put my name in for the courier position.”

Two days later, Din shows up at the cantina. Two green ears poke out from his sling. After giving the Mandalorian a hearty arm-clasp, Cara reaches over to tickle a downy ear and gets a delighted quiver in response.

Giving the cantina a once-over, Din says, “Still can’t believe Greef didn’t move his operations.”

She snorts. “He made a big deal about rebuilding. He’s always going on about respectability when he swans around town. Always at full volume. I think he’s trying to singlehandedly raise the property values.”

Din grunts in amusement, but doesn’t follow up. Not one for small talk, this Mandalorian.

She motions for him to follow her into the backroom that serves as Greef’s office. Keying in the code to a small safe, she takes out the green-painted pauldron. “I was on Scipio when I found this. Know anybody who lives there—possibly underground?”

He runs his finger over the signet, and shakes his head. “Describe it for me. Everything you can remember,” he says.


	2. Discoveries

As Cara briefs Din about the encounter in the alleyway on Scipio, she admits there’s not that much to tell. “If I’d just seen a random kid responding to someone speaking your language—what I assume was your language—I might not have mentioned it. But this chunk of armor was real.”

Meanwhile, Din’s tiny green kid gnaws on the pauldron.

“I don’t recognize the signet, but this definitely belongs to a Mandalorian,” says Din as he coaxes it away from the baby and secures it in one of his belt pouches. “One of the pucks I picked up will take me in that direction. I can stop at Scipio first.”

“The alleyway where I found it is a bit hard to describe,” Cara says, as she starts sketching out a map on a datapad. “Too bad you can’t wait a day—or else I could show you myself. I’m escorting tomorrow’s freighter to Scipio.”

When he turns his head quizzically, Cara realizes that she hasn’t told him yet about her new job: namely, babysitting live and frozen quarry on their journey back to the clients who commissioned their capture. She assumes that as a seasoned bounty hunter, Din is already familiar with the Guild’s hub-and-spoke route network, but on the contrary, he seems blithely unaware of this aspect of bounty hunting. “Don’t you ever wonder what happens to your quarry after you turn them in?” she asks.

“Not really.”

“Well, those carbonite slabs don’t escort themselves.” She tilts her head, considering for a moment. “It’s a short hop to Scipio. If you head over there now, you’ll just arrive in the middle of the night. Why not wait until morning? You know you’re welcome to crash at my place.”

He hesitates. He’s always like this, Cara knows. Accepting hospitality doesn’t come naturally to him.

“You can grab dinner from the bazaar or the cantina. Take a real shower, if you like.”

She waits a beat for him to answer. Smiling, she pushes her face right up to his visor and squints, as if to peer inside. “Hellloooo in there? Did you finally run out of words?”

The kid shrieks in laughter.

She turns to the baby. “Well, I know _somebody_ wants good food and a sudsy bath in the sink ...” She scoops up the kid and starts walking off. “You do whatever you want, Mando.”

He follows them with a sigh that sounds suspiciously like a laugh.

Over dinner, Din tells her about his latest unsuccessful search for the kid’s people. Mealtime turns into playtime as the baby insists on floating small objects towards Cara. She plucks them out of the air, thanking him for each one. Then, gesturing at a hovering fork, she asks, “Can you spin it?” As the utensil begins to twirl lazily in mid-air, she gives the kid a firm nod of approval. Din leans back and watches the two of them. Before long, it’s time for Cara's guests to settle in on the couch.

In the middle of the night, Din gets up to use the refresher. Walking quietly back to the living room, past the bedroom, he notices that the door is ajar. In the dark, he sees Cara sitting by the window, with her head resting on her hand. She seems to be staring out at the lava plains, lit by Nevarro’s moons. Then she takes a deep breath and swipes at her eyes with her palm. Din blanches. Up until now, he could not have imagined Cara crying. Now he has seen it.

The next morning, Din wakes up to see Cara already dressed and ready to head out the door. “I was about to leave you a note,” she says, laughing at his raspier-than-usual morning voice. “I have to get to the shipyard early to help load the freighter. I’m told all the pre-flight can take up to an hour, so you’ve got plenty of time. Just lock up when you leave.” She tosses off a casual salute and breezes out the door. “See you at Scipio.”

By the time they meet up at Scipio’s spaceport, the carbonite slabs have already been offloaded onto a transport. A bit regretfully, Cara has realized that her new duties come first—she has to escort the “warm acquisitions” directly to the Guild offices—but she takes a minute to give Din the lay of the land. “See that big government building at the end of this avenue? The one with the spires? There are several small streets and alleys directly behind it. That’s where I—” she lowers her voice, “found the pauldron. I wish I could show you myself—“

“No, it’s fine,” he says, hand resting on his belt pouch. “All I need is a starting point. This is helpful.”

“Dune!” the freighter pilot yells at her. “Get this scum off my ship before I toss them off myself.”

“Keep me updated, Mando. You’ve got my comm link.” She jogs back into the freighter to unchain the acquisitions from their bench.

As Cara escorts the gaggle to the Guild offices, located a few blocks away, most just shuffle numbly. One of them, however—a reedy Muun—hurls abuse at her as he complains about having been roughed up by the bounty hunter who captured him.

“That’s why the doctor’s about to waste some perfectly good bacta to make sure you look presentable for your court appearance,” Cara tells him. “Or is it a creditor that we’ll be delivering you to?” She checks the datapad and whistles. “You tried to embezzle from a Hutt? Maker, that seems unwise.”

The prisoner shackled directly behind the Muun accountant recoils, as if his fate were contagious.

“On the bright side, maybe the Hutts will let you pay it off by fighting in their gladiator pits,” says Cara cheerfully.

That seems to shut him up.

Later that afternoon, at the Guild offices, Cara is sitting through an onboarding session. As she bemusedly watches an instructional holo about safe-handling procedures for tanks of liquid carbonite, her comm buzzes. She excuses herself, finds a vacant stairwell, and taps the comm link.

Din interrupts her greeting by launching into a full status report: “I found the Mandalorians. Four total: three adults, one foundling. They’re not from Nevarro. They’ve been stranded here on this planet for months, and I’m planning to take them to my relocated covert.”

In the stairwell, Cara stands with her mouth agape at the sheer volume of information Din is entrusting her with. This has never happened before.

Then Din drops the bombshell: “But one of them can’t travel right now. She’s pregnant. It’s a hybrid pregnancy.”

“Hybrid?” Cara grimaces. “Stars, that’s no joke.” Everybody knows that interspecies pregnancies are extremely high-risk. Miscarriages are very common, and monitoring is necessary. “How far along is she? She and the fetus must be really tough to have survived this long without proper prenatal care.”

“That’s the thing. She’s experiencing, uh, complications right now.”

“Please don’t say early labor.”

“Just intermittent hemorrhaging,” he replies.

Cara flinches. She’s thankful Din can’t see her reaction.

He keeps talking. “The relocated covert doesn’t have much in the way of medical facilities or supplies. Our healer there definitely doesn’t have any experience with hybrid pregnancies. I’m thinking her condition may require advanced medical tech.”

Cara thinks quickly. “There’s four of them, you said? Get them out of the sewers, or wherever you found them. Choose an inn near the Guild offices and book two rooms—let me know where. I was planning to spend the night here anyway. I’ll meet you there in an hour, as soon as I’m done with Guild stuff. We’ll figure this out.”

By the time Cara arrives at the inn, Din has gotten the stranded Mandos settled in the adjoining room.

“Did it take much convincing to move them here?” she asks. They were essentially refugees, after all. How long had it been since they’d been inside a normal building?

He shakes his head. “The place where they were hiding was far from ideal. Even the Crest would have been preferable to that. But I convinced them that spending the night in a place with a full refresher would be better for the pregnant one.”

“Good,” she replies. “So I have some ideas about how to proceed, but I also need info. Can I meet them? I’m sure they’ll want to be involved in the planning.”

Din leads Cara into the next room, where a visibly pregnant Mandalorian is reclining on the bed. The other two adults are still wearing the cloaks that Din used to ferry them through the streets without attracting attention. Playing in the corner with Din’s kid is a very young boy with tousled white-blond hair—he’s the one she’d seen running through the alleyway. The baby perks up when he sees Cara, but everybody else seems to tense up.

Cara gives the children a smile and a wave. The adults are another matter. Suspecting that sympathy might be mistaken for pity, she greets them with a brisk and businesslike tone. “Are you bleeding right now? I brought some clean rags, just in case,” Cara says to the woman on the bed, noticing that the green pauldron has been restored to her right shoulder. Pregnant Gal gives a curt nod as she accepts the cloth rags, then says something in another language to Din.

“The bleeding has stopped for now, but it’s been like this for a few days,” he translates for Cara. He hesitates for a second. “She insists she’s fine."

The other two, who Cara is already thinking of as Yellow and Orange/Green based on the color of their helmets, make frustrated gestures and start in on their pregnant comrade. They seem to be revisiting an old argument.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Cara asks Din quietly: “Is one of them the father?”

“No, her riduur—her partner—was killed a few months ago, not long after they arrived here.”

“So it’s only been the three of them here on Scipio all this time? They do seem pretty worried about her.”

Din nods. “It’s not just that. Births within the Tribe are rare—cherished.”

Cara hears what he leaves unspoken: They’ll do whatever it takes to save this child.

It’s clear that the other Mandalorians are uncomfortable around Cara. She asks them questions, but they address their answers to Din. Cara suspects that “no talking to outsiders” is not a strict requirement for these particular Mandalorians—more of a longstanding habit. When they do occasionally slip up, it flusters them. It’s undeniably annoying, but Cara decides it’s not worth bringing up. Scipio seems to have been pretty unkind to them. She can hardly blame them for resenting anybody who appears to navigate it with ease.

Somewhat to Cara’s surprise, the Mandos are willing to bring Pregnant Gal to a hospital. Or rather, Yellow and Orange/Green seem adamant that she should—and the woman is not against the idea of hospitals though she thinks her comrades are overreacting in general. There does seem to be some unspoken concern about the cost, though Din sets their mind at ease on that count.

“Greef just paid me, so I have the credits,” he says.

Cara senses that even considering seeking medical care from outsiders involves the bending of many Mandalorian rules. Unfortunately, she has to break the news that it may not be that easy. “I asked around,” she says, “and I found out the hospitals here only serve the higher-caste citizens. Everybody else gets treated at healers’ clinics. Long waiting lists.” She can see Din deflate in frustration. She hastens to add: “But there may be another way.”

She tells them about the med assessments she had observed today. That the Guild had instituted these health checks to minimize liability for any fugitives who expired between time of acquisition and time of delivery. That some clients even demanded their fugitives be returned to them in good shape. That the Bounty Guild med bay was staffed by a rota of medical apprentices; between them and the state-of-the-art medical droids, they provided hospital-level care. “So ironically,” Cara concludes, “if our pregnant friend here were brought in as a bounty, she could get the scans and treatment that she needs.”

“But there’s no bounty out on her,” objects Yellow Helmet, speaking in Basic for the first time. Directly addressing _her_ for the first time. “She hasn’t done anything wrong.”

“There’s no bounty on her _yet,_ ” Cara says. “But what if she were a misguided runaway whose loving family just wanted somebody to find her and bring her home?”

Din sits up straighter. “You’re suggesting we put out a bid for her capture … and then we bring her in ourselves?”

She nods. Holds her breath and waits.

Din is still, but in his mind, he’s pacing. She can see it. “Submitting a bid—it can’t be … It’s gotta be complicated. We’d need to forge or mask the client’s identity.”

“I started looking into it, and I think we can pull it off. I also kinda want to test out my new Guild powers,” Cara says with a lopsided grin. “But you’re right that we need to anticipate everything that could go wrong.”

Din stands up. “Let’s get started.”


	3. How to hire a hunter (Bounty Guild FAQ)

**THE BOUNTY GUILD (OUTER RIM TERRITORIES)**

**FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS**

_**I am interested in hiring a Guild-certified hunter to retrieve a fugitive. What happens after I submit a bid?** _

After a client deposits the bounty reward and the Guild determines that the bid conforms to all terms and conditions, it is uploaded to the case queue. A Retrieval Specialist will claim the case. The case is considered resolved as soon as the Fugitive’s capture has been certified and delivery confirmed. 

_**Can I specify the type of hunter I prefer to pursue a fugitive?** _

No. Once a case has been uploaded to the case queue, it can be claimed by any Guild member in good standing.

Rest assured, the Bounty Guild’s hunters are consummate professionals! All are certified in multiple skip-tracing and retrieval methods. Moreover, our hunters faithfully adhere to the strict confidentiality required by the Bounty Guild Code: _“Once delivered, never recalled.”_ Once the case is resolved, all events relating to the hunt are immediately forgotten.

_**Can anybody be the target of a Guild bounty hunter?** _

Guild guidelines are designed to discourage frivolous bids (i.e. the hunt or capture of innocent individuals):

  * Fugitive categories are limited to the following:

    * _Bail Jumper –_ individuals who have absconded from the custody of a court of justice (recognized as such by the New Republic)

    * _Debtor_ _–_ individuals who have been flagged for payment delinquency by a certified collections agency

    * _Runaway_ _–_ individuals who have been reported missing by their legal custodian or next of kin

    * _Other_ _–_ If you believe you have a legitimate hunt that falls outside these categories, please contact a Guild representative, who will determine whether your bid falls within our purview.

  * Upfront payment of the bounty reward and Guild processing fees by the Client is required.

  * The Client’s chain code is verified and securely linked to the bid/case. If a hunt or capture is later determined to have been frivolous, the Client can be traced and held legally liable for all damages.




_**I have heard stories about Clients who have been double-crossed by bounty hunters. How can I ensure this does not happen to me?** _

Occasionally, in “Direct to Client” cases where the Retrieval Specialist delivers the Fugitive in person, some Clients are motivated to pay the hunter directly. (In such cases, upon confirmation of on-site payment by both Client and Retrieval Specialist, the Guild will refund the Client their original deposit, minus processing fees.) The “double-crossing” instances you refer to likely involve such situations, in which the Retrieval Specialist “goes rogue” in demanding a higher fee from the Client by threatening injury or death.

These instances are statistically very rare. However, it is for these reasons that the Guild’s practice is to hold the hunter’s contractually stipulated fee in escrow until after delivery has been safely concluded. We strongly advise Clients to rely upon the Guild to broker all matters related to payment. Otherwise, the Client accepts all risks thereupon and the Guild is released from all liability for the Client’s death and/or dismemberment.

If you require further clarification, please contact the Guild—a representative will be happy to answer your questions.

If you are ready to submit a bid for fugitive retrieval, please fill out the form below.

**THE BOUNTY GUILD (OUTER RIM TERRITORIES)**

**BID FORM**

Fugitive’s name and chain code: ____________

Fugitive category (choose one): **BAIL JUMPER / DEBTOR / RUNAWAY / OTHER**

Please upload a recent hologram of the Fugitive. In the space provided below, indicate the Fugitive’s species, coloration, sex or gender, height, and weight; describe any identifying scars, marks, or features.

Describe the Fugitive’s last known whereabouts. Please provide as much detail as possible.

Client’s name and chain code: ____________

Bounty reward: ________

Although the Guild strongly prefers that processing fees be paid in New Republic credits, bounty rewards can be offered in any currency. (The Guild assumes no responsibility for currency conversion rates.) Bounty rewards must be deposited with the Guild before the bid can be processed.

Time frame (choose one): **STANDARD / PRIORITY**

  * **Standard** : The case will remain open indefinitely until the Fugitive is retrieved.

  * **Priority** : Fugitive capture required within __ standard days.

    * If the case cannot be resolved within the Client’s specified time frame, the Client is entitled to a refund of the bounty deposit (minus Guild processing fees).




Fugitive shall be returned to Client (choose one): **LIVE / DECEASED / NO PREFERENCE**

**LIVE**

  * The Client will accept the delivery of Fugitive in carbonite: **YES** / **NO**

  * The Client agrees to pay an extra fee for a Fugitive health assessment. The assessment, to be conducted by independent medical professionals at Guild facilities as soon as possible after capture, certifies that the Fugitive is indeed alive and in stable condition before transport to Client. All Guild transport vessels are staffed with medics to monitor the health of Fugitives.




**DECEASED**

  * The Client will accept the following proof of death (choose one):  
**VISUAL PROOF OF TERMINATION / FUGITIVE’S REMAINS (CARBON-FROZEN)**




Fugitive shall be processed as follows (choose one): **GUILD-PROCESSED DELIVERY** / **DIRECT TO CLIENT**

  * **Guild-Processed Delivery** : Within the Outer Rim Territories, the Guild guarantees delivery to Client within two (2) standard days of certified capture.

  * **Direct to Client** : The Guild offers no guarantees regarding timeliness of delivery, as transport arrangements are the sole responsibility of the Retrieval Specialist.

    * Please provide the delivery address where the Client intends to claim the Fugitive.





	4. Troubleshooting the plan

Cara pulls out a burner datapad, creates a throwaway account, and opens the Bounty Guild bid form.

First things first. “We need her name.” There’s an awkward pause. Cara sighs. “You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t necessary.”

Pregnant Gal speaks up: “Xora Triz.” Her voice is younger than Cara expected.

“OK. Xora, do you have a chain code? The Guild will validate against the New Republic databases, so slicing wouldn’t work here.”

Thankfully, Xora does, according to her exchange with Din. “From before she was a Foundling,” he adds, as Cara types in the chain code.

Cara frowns as she looks up. “That makes it sound like … Does that mean anybody born in a covert is completely off the grid?”

“More or less,” says Din. “Even before the Purge, some Mandalorians didn’t have a chain code.”

Cara thinks through the implications. “An entire generation, undocumented and untrackable. That’s really inconvenient.”

“Spoken like a true Guild bureaucrat,” says Din, tossing one of the baby’s toys at her.

Rolling her eyes, Cara scoops up the toy and volleys it straight back at him, bouncing it off his helmet.

She moves down the form. “Species?”

Another consultation. Din supplies the answer: “Zabrak.”

For the hologram of their “fugitive,” they use a handheld scanner, borrowed from the innkeeper. “Helmet’s fine, of course,” says Cara lightly to Xora. “Because that’s how you’d look to any hunter—if this were real.”

Xora gingerly pushes herself up from the bed and stands up. Her frame is weighed down with exhaustion, but she clenches her fists, squares her shoulders, and lifts her chin as Din rolls the scanning ray from head to toe. Cara checks the hologram—low-quality, but it’ll do—and gives a quick nod. Xora blows out a breath and sinks back down onto the mattress.

Cara continues down the form. “Delivery will be DIRECT TO CLIENT, obviously, because we do _not_ want to involve any Guild Agents in this. Um, will we be doing the ‘handover’ on the planet where the covert moved to?”

There’s a long pause, and Cara senses everybody getting uneasy again. _Again with the paranoia_ , she thinks wearily, though she can hardly fault them for it. During the standoff on Nevarro, Moff Gideon had demonstrated how far he would go to hunt down information on his targets. The less that Din Djarin’s non-Mandalorian friend knows about the relocated covert, the less she can reveal accidentally or under duress. So yeah, the secrecy makes sense: A planet is a big place, but why allow Moff Gideon—or anybody else—a head start?

“Give me a star system, at least. A sector? Something! Just trying to figure out the logistics.” Cara pulls up a list of the weekly outbound freighters. “How’s this: We’ll do the handover at a planet which may or may not be close enough for you all to speed home afterwards.”

Din points to Pantora. “That’ll do.”

“So who’s going to play the role of the client?” Cara thinks out loud. “He has to be plausible as the father of Xora’s baby.”

“Her riduur was human,” Din tells her.

“Right. So, we need a human male who’d be able to accept delivery of the fugitive on Pantora—possibly as soon as tomorrow. They have to be willing and able to tie their chain code to this case. But that won’t follow them, since resolved cases are sealed. Buried and forgotten.”

“Let me handle this,” says Din. “There’s somebody I used to run with. He’ll do it for credits.”

“He can make it to Pantora on short notice?”

“Yeah, he’s based nearby, on Alzoc III. I’ll message him now.” He strides out to make the call.

She calls out after him. “Make sure he doesn’t have any outstanding warrants.”

Alone in the room with the other Mandalorians, Cara stands up to stretch out her limbs and crack her back. She notices that the towheaded foundling has fallen asleep with his head thrown back against the wall and mouth hanging open. Din’s little green kid pats him insistently—and getting no response, toddles over to Cara to examine her boot. She nods at the armored adults, with an encouraging smile. No response.

When Din returns, Xora says something in a whisper and the other Mandos pull him aside. He turns to Cara and before he can speak, she stands up. “We’ll handle the rest of the form on our own,” she assures them. Picking up Din’s kid, she leads the way back to the other room.

She needs some air. Opening the window, she looks out. From here, the blocky outline of Guild headquarters is just barely visible, dwarfed by the bank skyscrapers. Evening traffic is in full swing, with speeders whizzing by. Cara gives herself a minute to revel in the sight of faces—unguarded, expressive faces. Those commuters are clearly simmering with anger. The security guard across the street is lost in reverie. A nearby trio of schoolchildren giggles nervously as they plot some prank. Other people can be sloppy with their feelings and Cara doesn't always have time for it, but right now it feels like oxygen.

Grabbing some fruit from her bag, she sits and leans back, resting her feet on the table. The baby points at her mouth as she nibbles, so she offers him a chunk of fruit. He chews it slowly and solemnly. “Want more?” she asks, but he shakes his head. On an impulse, Cara scrunches her mouth and nose grotesquely to get a reaction from the baby. His dark eyes widen and he blinks rapidly.

Din picks up the datapad to enter in the name and chain code of their accomplice client: Dunnel Hro.

“So the gig appears in the queue as soon as we submit it? Or after we pay the deposit?” he asks. “This is all new to me.”

She looks up in surprise. “Don't you ever grab gigs from the queue?”

“I scrolled through the listings once or twice. Seemed mostly like junk. It’s just easier to get pucks from Greef.”

“Especially when you’re one of his favorites,” she finishes, saying what he won’t. As a high-ranking Guild Agent, Greef can put a temporary hold on choice gigs and funnel them to his preferred hunters, saving them the bother of combing through hundreds of gigs online. Din might sometimes grouse about low payment or a tight timeframe for the jobs he’s been given, but most bounty hunters are dealing with worse options.

“By the way, for Xora’s case, it makes sense for me to be the hunter,” Cara tells him. “Because a Mandalorian bounty hunter chasing down a Mandalorian quarry, and returning them to a non-Mando client … would you even do that? If this were a real case, I mean? I feel like that scenario would raise flags.”

“I have no idea,” Din says slowly, “what the average person thinks a Mandalorian would or wouldn’t do.”

“Let’s make sure no busybody in the Guild ever bothers to ask themselves that question.”

Din hesitates, as if he wants to disagree, then nods.

She scrolls down her datapad. “We’re almost done. So the minimum bounty for this category of runaways is 50,000 credits.”

Din just grumbles and shakes his head.

“They keep it high to discourage casual abductions. Would your covert be willing to stake that amount?”

“All they have is what I earn. They wouldn’t have that much cash on hand.”

“Hmm. Would your Armorer be willing to surrender some beskar ingots—temporarily—for the deposit? It would be safe in the Guild vault.”

There’s a weird harumph from Din, and Cara looks up. “You don’t think so? That place is state-of-the-art. And _bristling_ with security.”

“I’m agreeing with you.”

“Hard to tell sometimes,” she grins. “But your Armorer would do it? For these stray Mandos that she’s never met before?”

“Yes,” Din says. He sounds almost fully confident. “I’d have to fly there to explain it to her and bring the beskar here. If I head out now, I could probably return by—”

Cara’s eyes light up. “Wait! No need to go off-world when the beskar’s right here.” She looks meaningfully at Din, then taps his cuirass. He recoils.

She laughs. “Not yours, dummy. I’m talking about Xora and … the other two. We can use her pauldron, plus a few other pieces.”

Din nods. These Scipio Mandalorians wear mostly durasteel armor, but between the three of them, there should be enough beskar to carry out their plan. “Leave it to me,” he says.

Just as he had anticipated, the other Mandalorians balk at the plan. What could be more unnatural than to relinquish one’s beskar’gam?

Din allows the outrageousness of the request to sink in. He will not force them. “Whatever you lend me would be guarded in the Bounty Guild vault, which is impregnable,” he tells them. “You’ll have it back within a day after we reach the covert. When our alor assesses your beskar’gam, not a single piece will be missing _._ ”

The room is nearly silent. Their window is closed, but street sounds filter in.

“Ke gaanader, verde,” Din tells them. _Choose, warriors_.

He waits. It’s only a matter of time before they remember the proverb ...

Sure enough, Xora speaks up. _“_ Verd ori'shya beskar'gam,” she says simply as she removes her pauldron. _A warrior is more than his armor._ She starts to remove her one other beskar plate, but the others stop her as they begin to unbuckle their own armor.

“We can spare these pieces for a day or two. For you and the unborn ik’aad,” they say to her.

“Vor entye,” Xora whispers.

Din returns from the other room with a small stack of armor plates and piles them on the table.

“May I?” At his nod, Cara picks them up to examine them. Three pauldrons, two shin guards, and a cuisse. Each is covered with chipped paint, but all have the distinctive weight of beskar. The metal is still warm from being worn next to the body, which only reminds her that Mandalorian armor is not meant to be handled by strangers like her. The way they revere it, beskar is treated more like a second layer of skin or a spiritual exoskeleton than mere protective shielding. In fact, these rounded plates do resemble giant scales _. Priceless scales from a rare and grumpy animal_ , she thinks.

Unbidden, she’s reminded of an image from a long-ago documentary holo: the Zillo Beast that rampaged on Coruscant one memorable day during the Clone Wars. As a child, she’d been thrilled and horrified by the giant reptile’s sheer mass, large enough to enfold skyscrapers in its great grasp. _How much does a creature like that weigh?_ she had wondered.

More to the point, how much do these beskar plates weigh? She hefts them in her hand. “Will this cover the 50,000-credit minimum for the bounty?”

“Easily,” he assures her. “All told, this would probably fetch 60,000 credits.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Cara says dryly, “but how do you know the street value of beskar?”

“I overhear things. People talk.”

She looks flatly skeptical.

“The people who want to steal my armor,” he clarifies. “They like to brag about how much they can sell it for.”

Cara starts looking for something they can use to bundle up the beskar plates. In the end, they roll it up in the kid’s spare blanket and use stretch cords to secure it. The baby whimpers and reaches for his blanket as it’s taken away from him, but Din promises they’ll get him a new one. To distract him, Cara makes another outrageously silly face at him.

“So how do we get this to the vault? Neither of us can be seen dropping it off at Guild HQ,” Din says.

“That would defeat the purpose, yes.”

“But that means ...” The thought of handing it over to an intermediary, even temporarily, clearly unnerves him.

Cara walks to the window and motions him over. “See all those speeder bikes with that angular white logo?” she points. “They’re bank couriers. We’ll hire one right outside the Guild and have him walk this package in.” She looks him directly in the eye. “I won’t let it out of my sight, Din.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he says, the words coming out halting and apologetic. “I promised them—“

She puts her hand on his arm. “No, I get it. If I cared about anything that much, I’d be on edge too,” she replies. “Honestly, that’s why I travel light. It’s just easier knowing there’s nothing in my life I can’t replace.”

“Nothing?” There’s an odd note of disbelief in his voice.

She does a quick mental inventory of everything she owns. “Nothing’s worth _that_ much,” she snorts.

A few seconds pass before she realizes how dismissive she must sound. “Hey, the armor is part of your tradition—I respect that,” she adds quickly. “I’m just not religious like that about physical objects.”

“Objects,” he echoes, and something in him seems to untense.

“Yeah, objects.” She frowns. “What else would I be talking about?”

As her glance flickers over to Din’s kid, she does a double-take. The baby’s features are contorted in a bug-eyed grimace— mirroring the funny faces she’s been pulling at him. _How long has he b_ _een standing there like that?_ Cara crosses her eyes and scowls back. Game on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> riduur – partner, spouse  
> beskar’gam – armor  
> alor – leader  
> Ke gaanader, verde – Choose, warriors  
> Verd ori'shya beskar'gam – A warrior is more than his armor (Mandalorian proverb)  
> ik’aad – baby  
> Vor entye – thank you


	5. Plausible deniability

The bank courier is baffled.

“You want to watch me deliver this package? To the Bounty Guild—that building there, right across the street?” he asks.

Cara nods. “Yup, I’ll be with you until the last few steps. Easiest job you’ll ever do.”

“But … why?” the courier asks.

She sighs and rolls her eyes. “Let’s just say that the client I’m representing is very paranoid. He wants the tracking authentication of your courier firm, but he’s also paying me extra to make sure this package never leaves my sight.” She holds up credits—the full delivery fee.

Sure enough, hard cash quashes curiosity. The courier pulls out a branded pouch from his messenger bag. “Honestly, this isn’t even the craziest delivery I’ve done,” he confides as he drops in the bundle, seals the pouch and scans the tracking label. “There was this one time we had to deliver documents to the delegation from the Muunilinst Banking Consortium, and their meeting turned out to be _an orgy_. You would not believe the things they were doing with Calamari flan.”

“No kidding?” Cara grins, impressed. “Oh, before I forget—sign this package in as a Vault Deposit under this client’s name and this provisional case number.” The courier scribbles down the info as they start walking across the street towards Guild HQ. “So, did you actually see the orgy?” she asks.

Cara walks briskly towards the Acquisitions Transport counter and flashes her provisional courier badge at the receptionist. “I’m scheduled to escort the freighter to Pantora tomorrow afternoon. No need to check in here beforehand, right? I just show up at the spaceport?” she asks. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches the bank courier sign in the package as a deposit. “Also, where can I pick up some blank pucks and tracking fobs?”

As Cara finishes up at the Guild, she reflects on the afternoon and how much faster things would have gone if the Mandalorians hadn’t been so skittish around her. Compared to these Scipio Mandalorians, taciturn Din Djarin seems worldly and gregarious—practically a social butterfly. There’s a certain logic to that: As the hunter for his covert, he’s had the opportunity to travel to scores of planets. He’s interacted with individuals from hundreds of species—mostly violently, to be sure—but at least he can tell a Nikto from a Neimoidian. But for every hunter, there are probably dozens of Mandalorians whose world is confined to the Tribe. Cara begins to wonder about a whole generation being raised in hiding, unaccustomed to dealing with outsiders.

She taps her comm link. “Package is secured and I’ve got an official receipt to prove it,” she tells Din. “Are the others hungry? Did you feed them?”

“Not yet.”

“I’ll pick something up from the market stalls.”

She buys a family-size portion of grilled meat and flatbread, a few bottles of local ale, and then something fun for the kids—a sweet that’s almost too pretty to eat.

Back at the inn, she announces, “Look! I brought paila stars!” and holds out the box of iridescent blue candies. Din’s kidimmediately dives into the box and it takes some firm persuasion to pull him loose.

Cara hands one of the gelatinous stars to the towheaded Mandalorian foundling. He looks up at her with startlingly light eyes, at a loss for words. “It’s good. Just chew it,” she tells him. She pops one into her own mouth and savors its creamy tartness.

“I can’t imagine these guys will ever come back to Scipio,” she says to Din, “so they might as well try the local specialty before they leave.”

“This is what Scipio’s known for?” he asks, distracted as he doles out the sweets one by one to his kid.

“Yep. Paila stars, mountain skiing, and exotic credit default swaps. The candy seemed the easiest to sample.”

She turns to the light-eyed foundling. “These stars are made from the juice of the blue paila fruit. They’re like sparkly berries—maybe even prettier than these stars.”

His eyes get even bigger as he stares at his candy.

In a low voice, she tells Din the less glamorous story behind the confection—how a Scipio consortium had patented the genome for the fruit and built an entire greenhouse industry around it. “When they bought the rights from a farmer on another planet, they made him uproot all his vines. They actually send tilling droids to churn up his fields every year, just to make sure none of the rootstock remains."

Din makes a disgusted sound.

"Bankers, right?” Cara grimaces. “They _are_ organized, I’ll give them that. There’s something about Scipio that feels more Core than Outer Rim."

"I think it’s called money," he says bluntly.

She starts laughing. "That’s it. That’s why it feels familiar."

Xora, Yellow, and Orange/Green retreat to their own room and the refreshers to eat. Din, as usual, demurs and says he’ll eat later. “Let’s finish up with this bid first,” he says.

Cara wipes her fingers and grabs the datapad. “That’s fair. We don’t know how quickly they’ll approve it.”

She enters the deposit receipt number and triumphantly submits the bid. Then she pulls up the “New Gigs” queue page and … feels silly. Obviously this is going to take at least a few minutes. Probably longer.

“Hey, I’m curious about something,” she says to Din. “You all are scattered in these coverts, but I assume that’s not meant to be permanent. I mean, a restored Mandalorian homeworld is the ultimate goal, right?”

There’s a gruff, reluctant sound that is probably meant to be a yes, followed quickly by: “But we’re nowhere close to that.”

She holds up her hands in a placating gesture. “For now, sure. But when everybody does emerge to rebuild Mandalore, who’s going to run things? You’ll need at least a few Mandos who can actually stand to be in a room with non-Mandalorians. To conduct trade … and, like, tourism?”

Cara tries to imagine an interplanetary trade delegation being greeted by a phalanx of impassive T-visors. Then she imagines a mythosaur-themed amusement park staffed by intimidating warriors who refuse to address the guests directly.

“I don’t know. Our leader will—” Din sighs, and it does not sound like a laugh. “Cara, I can’t think about all that right now.”

“Fine. Just asking.” She tosses another paila star into her mouth.

As time passes, they quickly notice that dozens of bids are added to the queue every few minutes. To avoid having to scan them all, Cara sets a keyword alert for “runaway” and “pregnant”—as well as a filter for search results from this sector of the Outer Rim, figuring that ought to narrow things down considerably.

In fact, over the next hour, the datapad does ping with a few keyword matches—all for other cases of pregnant runaways. Non-fake cases, presumably. Lots of unhappy pregnant teens out there.

She stands up and stretches. “How’s Xora doing? She OK for now?”

After a quick check of the next room, Din reports that their soon-to-be quarry has fallen asleep.

“I’ll take that as a good sign. Sleep always helps.” Cara takes a swig of ale as she refreshes the screen.

“What weapons did you bring?” Din asks, out of nowhere.

“Just these,” she answers, patting her blaster and her knife. “Is this about tomorrow? Because I don’t see us having to force doctors at gunpoint. For once, violence may not be necessary.”

“Unnatural,” he shakes his head. “I don’t like it.”

Cara grins and keeps scrolling. What they’re attempting is not so much a holdup as a heist—except that their goal is to get the valuable object _into_ a very special room, and the success of the mission mostly hinges on whether they’ve filled out the paperwork convincingly. She yawns.

Naturally, it’s only when Cara takes a break from staring at the datapad screen that their case pops up in the queue. She’s in the refresher, splashing water on her face, when she hears Din calling her.

“Show me,” she says, rushing out. “Where’s the datapad?”

“I saw it in here,” he says, tapping his helmet.

She stares at him. “What do you mean _in there_?”

“My HUD. I got pinged.” His hands gesticulate, as if he’s trying to wave the explanation directly into her head. “Years ago, the one time I tried using the listings, I flagged ‘beskar’ as a keyword. Then I forgot about it, because nobody pays in beskar.”

“Nobody except fake clients like us.” She picks up the datapad.

There it is: **Case #UG43GJ.** **PREGNANT RUNAWAY SPOUSE—PLEASE RETURN TO FAMILY**.

Then Cara’s brow furrows. “Why does it say BID CLAIMED?” Her eyes dart up. “What the fuck, Din? We agreed it wasn’t a good idea for you to take this case. Why would you—”

His hands block her accusation. “I didn’t—”

“Then who—” Cara taps to view the identity of the Guild hunter who had apparently swooped in and grabbed their fake case right from underneath their noses. Her eyes grow wide.

Din hovers over her shoulder. “SessRheen,” he reads out the name. “Here’s what we do: When this Sess Rheen joker shows up, we’ll just force her to relinquish the case.”

“But we have no idea when she’ll arrive planetside. It could take days,” Cara says. “The point of all this was to get Xora medical attention as soon as possible.” She presses her lips together firmly. “I know this person, actually. Let me try to strike a deal with her.” Flipping the datapad to access her list of contacts, Cara walks into the hallway to comm the other bounty hunter in private.

A few minutes later, she returns with a tight smile. “Done.”

“How much?” Din asks, but she doesn’t answer. “Did this Rheen ask for a cut? Or dibs on the next big bounty puck from Greef?“

“Not exactly,” Cara replies, distracted, doing calculations in her head.

He stares at her, suspicious.

Eventually, she notices. “Oh, don’t worry—I didn’t promise her your kid or anything.”

“Don’t even joke about that, Cara.”

“Listen to me, Mando: The deal I cut with Rheen has nothing to do with you. It’s none of your business. And the proper response is _thank you_.”

Within minutes, Case #UG43GJ shows up again in the queue, available for any hunter to grab. This time, Cara claims it with no problem. Grabbing a blank tracking fob from her bag, she keys the fugitive’s chain code to the device. Unless otherwise authorized, every fugitive’s chain code can only be downloaded once to a single fob by the assigned hunter. Any subsequent attempts at downloading would be flagged as a potential attempt by another hunter to poach the gig.

“We should do this by the book,” Cara shrugs. “Without a fob, how else would I be able to locate Xora?”

“Makes sense.”

A bounty puck was optional—she knows at least three hunters who have a photographic memory. But no tracking fob? That would definitely raise suspicions.

“Speaking of making this believable,” she says, “how long do you think we should wait before we bring her in?”

“I’m confused,” Din grumbles. It’s true—his stance is all question mark. “I thought you didn’t want to wait.”

Cara begins to wonder if she actually has a talent for deceit—or does it just feel that way in comparison with Din, who would blast, roast, grapple, and punch his way out of this dilemma if he could. _No, give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he’s just tired._

“What’s the fastest you’ve ever bagged your quarry?” she asks. “Forget any time spent in transit—once you’re planetside, what’s your personal record for completing a hunt? Just humor me.”

He takes a second to think about it. “An hour.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Just last year, on Dantooine. The target was a Whippomorn. Took forever to find a speeder big enough to haul her back to my ship, but actually finding and subduing her went quickly.”

“Right—and you’ve been hunting for years. Me, not so much. Why would anybody believe I closed a case within five minutes of claiming the gig? If some bureaucrat ever did a search for fastest captures ... well, that’s the kind of scrutiny we do not want.”

Skepticism flattens his voice even more than the vocoder. “What are the chances of somebody actually checking … Do you know something I don’t?”

“Does anybody ever think they’ll get caught? No. And that’s why they get caught.” Cara starts clearing the mess on the table, tossing out food wrappers and empty bottles. “Plausible deniability was the one thing I learned from guarding politicians after the war. If you’re going to screw around behind the scenes, at least spend some time working out a halfway-decent cover story. They weren’t all corrupt, those guys, but everyone had _something_ they needed to hide.”

She thumps Din’s shoulder. “Xora’s asleep anyways, right? Let’s give her a couple more hours of rest. We should probably catch a few winks too. Tomorrow could be a long day.”

A few hours later, they hear the sounds of talking from the next room. Short exchanges, muffled, but increasing in volume.

Din pulls himself up from the couch and checks on the kid in his carrier. Cara wipes her eyes before hopping out of the bed and gathering her things.

When she finally turns on the tracking fob, it immediately starts flashing and beeping at a rapid rate. She and Din walk into the hallway, stop at the door of the neighboring room, and do the agreed-upon knock.

“Gar morut’yc, vode _,_ ” Din says, for good measure.

The door opens. The two Mandalorians are standing there, waiting. On the bed, Xora is hunched over with her hand on her waist. As Cara walks towards her, the tracking fob’s flashing accelerates into solid red and the beeping becomes a steady whine.

“Xora, under the authorization of the Bounty Guild, I’m taking you into custody.” Cara holds out her hand. “Now let’s go save your baby.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gar morut’yc, vode – “You’re safe, fam”


	6. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: Brief mention of dubcon voyeurism

“You brought her in just in time,” the Guild doctor tells Cara. “Even a day or two later … well, it could have gone very badly. But we should be able to stabilize both her and the fetus.”

“What’s causing the bleeding?” Cara asks, expecting not to understand the answer.

“Persistent subchorionic hematoma.”

Yep, no idea what the doctor’s talking about. Cara smiles weakly and shrugs.

“Basically, it’s blood clots from a dislodged placenta. It’s rare to see it in the third trimester, but then again, there’s so little data on hybrid gestations—much less this particular mix—that we really don’t know if this is normal.”

Cara had wondered if the med bay would be able to handle a difficult pregnancy, but the two medical apprentices on duty had perked up as soon as they saw her escorting Xora into the med bay. If anything, they seem thrilled for the opportunity to branch out beyond the usual injuries associated with bounty hunting. Apparently, there are only so many blaster burns or dislocated shoulders that one can treat before monotony sets in—though those are at least more exciting than monitoring the hydration levels of thawed acquisitions who are recovering from carbonite sickness. That tedious task falls to the medical droids that move up and down the rows, checking the IVs of patients who wear dark eyeshields.

The doctor flips through her chart. “The patient is anemic and dehydrated, but we’re giving her a broad-spectrum nutrient supplement. Meanwhile, the fetus is a decent size, with a strong and regular heartbeat. _Both_ of the baby’s hearts, I should say. That’s a very good sign.”

For a second, Cara thinks the doctor is describing some bizarre anatomical mutation. Then she remembers that Zabraks have two hearts. (To kill a Zabrak, you must shoot at least twice. A bounty hunter without a decent grasp of xenoanatomy is guaranteed to have a short career.) But she’s never thought about how the circulatory system might work in a Zabrak-human hybrid. Xora has two heartbeats, and apparently so does the fetus inside her.

The doctor, who clearly enjoys showing off her knowledge, keeps talking. “In these hybrids, one of the hearts tends to become vestigial in adulthood. But in utero, the two hearts pull equal weight. That’s according to the medical literature, anyway.” She gets a faraway look in her eye. “These complications that the patient is presenting ... I might be able to write up a short case report and submit it to a journal.”

“Sounds exciting.” Cara’s comm link buzzes. _Right on time_. She addresses the doctor: “Hey, how much longer do you think this will take? No pressure.”

“Several hours at least. We’ve drawn some blood and are running a few more tests and scans to make sure she won’t have an adverse reaction to the treatment. If all goes well, we’ll go ahead and administer it, then monitor her for a few hours.” The doctor checks Xora’s chart. “Oh, I see she’s a ‘Direct to Client’ delivery.”

“Yeah, I was hoping to take her on the outbound freighter this afternoon.”

“I don’t see why not—if everything goes well.”

“Great. I need to go meet up with somebody right now, but I’ll be back to check on Xor—my acquisition—after lunch.”

In the park that faces the medical wing of the Guild, Din leans against a tree, keeping an eye on the building as if it might get up and leave. At his feet, his kid is sitting in a pile of leaves, playing with his own ears.

There’s a crunch of leaves behind him. Cara jogs up. “Hey, where are the other Mandos? I thought they’d be here with you.”

“Back at the inn. Being outdoors during the day … they’re not used to it,” Din says. “Where have you been?”

“I settled up with Rheen.”

“You’re really not going to tell me how much she wanted?”

Cara smiles and ignores him as she pulls out her datapad.

Din gestures at her neck, just above her collarbone, nearly hidden by her armor. “What happened there? You didn’t have those marks earlier—”

She actually flushes. Only then does Din put it together. The situation swivels into focus.

His head jerks up and he’s suddenly looming squarely in front of her. “You slept with that bounty hunter? Just now?” His voice is aghast. “Was _that_ the deal you struck?”

Cara stares straight ahead and blows out a long, controlled breath. Aiming for nonchalance, she replies, “A few months ago, Rheen and I hooked up. She wanted another go—and I said sure. That’s all she wanted.”

Honestly, it hadn’t been terrible, so why was her face so warm? Rheen had been exactly as needy as before, but whatever. The love bites were annoying, but they would fade.

Cara does _not_ mention that Rheen had brought along a friend. That had seriously thrown her for a loop.

(“Oh, Niroq’s just here to watch,” Rheen had purred. “Unless you want to include—”

“Nope,” said Cara as she pushed Rheen down on the bed.

Having an audience … it had been fine. Mostly.

Afterwards, as she was straightening her clothes in the corridor, Cara had overheard Niroq laughing lazily as he chided Rheen. "Wasn’t this better than a beskar payday?"

"I shouldn’t have to _choose_ …" The pouting in Rheen’s voice. So aggravating. Cara had shuddered as she walked off.)

Meanwhile, Din’s big fat helmet is still in her face.

Cara shrugs. “Look, it’s just sex. Do you know how many people I bang nowadays that I don’t like?”

Din’s shoulders stiffen even more.

 _Why is he making this into such a big deal?_ Cara tries again, spelling it out with plain logic. “Rheen grabbing the gig was a complication. So I uncomplicated it. Now it’s simple again. We managed to get Xora to the doctors in time—that was the hard part. They’ll discharge her soon, and then you can bring all your new Mandalorian friends to the covert. Mission accomplished.”

Din still hasn’t spoken.

 _Is this a gender thing?_ “If one of your big Mando warrior comrades needed to sleep with somebody to procure something crucial for your covert, wouldn’t they?” she demands. “Wouldn’t you?”

 _Paz Vizsla totally would_ , Din thinks, but he refuses to be baited. “We’re not even your people. Why would you do something like that for Mandalorians that you don’t even know?”

“I seem to remember risking _my life_ for a few Sorgan krill farmers,” she retorts. “Technically, they weren’t my people either. Neither were the folks on all those planets the Rebel Alliance dropped us onto. Either the helpless are your people or they’re not.” Cara shakes her head. Fuck, that sounded sanctimonious.

“I can’t repay this debt,” Din grits out.

“What _debt_?” Her voice is loud enough to attract attention. “Were you raised by the banking clans or something? Stop keeping track!” She stalks off towards the med bay.

Ten minutes later, Din receives a comm message from Cara. Text, not voice. “ _Doc says Xora/baby responding well to treatment.”_

“That’s good,” Din mutters to his kid, “but what does it mean for the schedule?” He voice-comms Cara, but she doesn’t answer.

Before he can try again, another text message from Cara pops up in his HUD: _“On track_ _for_ _afternoon freighter. Message client_ _to_ _meet at_ _Pantora_ _spaceport_ _at agreed time_ _. Will update._ ”

Din heads back to the inn, where the Scipio Mandos have clearly been fretting about the health of their pregnant comrade. He’s thankful to be bringing them good news. “She’s fine. The medical treatment is working.”

They release ragged sighs and lean on each other. Flooded with relief, they blurt out the thoughts they’ve been holding in all day.

“Didn’t think it would work, the aruetii’s plan. Filling out forms to trick the Guild—”

“—ridiculous,” the other finishes his sentence. “But Xora’s safe now.” More sighs of relief.

Something prevents Din from leaping to Cara’s defense. They’re not wrong: She _is_ an outsider. She knows practically nothing of the Tribe. He will never fully understand her.

It's their foundling who speaks up for Cara. “The aruetii gave me this,” he whispers, clutching his paila star. The candy’s gelatinous surface is covered with fingerprints and speckled with crumbs. Din’s kid perks up and extends a grabby hand.

The other Mandalorians crouch down. “Ad’ika, you still have that? It's meant to be eaten.”

“It’s mine. I want to keep it.” The boy is adamant.

Din knows better than to argue with a young child about what qualifies as a toy.

“Pack up,” he tells the adults. “If there’s anything else you need from the sewers, let’s grab it now and move it to the Crest.”

From their lighter mood, Din can tell that the Scipio Mandos are finally allowing themselves to believe that their ordeal is over. They rib each other about fitting in at the new covert, but only because they’re longing for the company of other Mandalorians after having been stranded for so long. It turns out that Xora's riduur had been the only one who knew how to pilot a spacecraft. In fact, he'd been killed during an attempt to steal a ship.

“Once we arrive at the new covert, I’ll never leave it again.” They nod emphatically at each other.

“Oh, the food! Beroya, the cook’s tiingilar … how is it?”

“Your mouth will burn. You’ll cry,” Din promises them, and from their response he thinks they might be weeping already in anticipation.

As a group, they make one final trip to the sewers to fetch their larger weapons. With tongues loosened, the two younger men gleefully badmouth Scipio as they walk through the streets of its capital city one last time. “No more scavenging for food in alleyways!” they crow.

Din watches them and says nothing. Dumpster-diving is demeaning, to be sure, but the wealthy citizens’ leavings had kept themwell-nourished for months. They have no idea how bad a planet can be.

Once everything has been loaded onto the Razor Crest, Din turns to the other Mandalorians. “We still have a few hours to kill. I’d like to stop by the snow peaks before we leave Scipio.” He’s had some time to think. The constant vigilance required to hide in a dense urban neighborhood had left them skittish. All the more reason to sample the opposite.

Their response is unenthusiastic but polite. “Certainly, if you have business there, beroya ...”

Din gestures at his kid. “I promised him.”

Truth be told, it’s not even a fake excuse. He _had_ gotten into the habit of visiting sites of natural wonder with his ad’ika, whenever time allowed. This sightseeing had begun as a search for clues, an attempt to narrow down the search for his foundling’s people—hoping the kid would respond strongly to a particular climate or ecosystem. The two of them had spent time in swamps and deserts, jungles and tundras. At first he’d monitored the kid closely for some mysterious sign that the type of flora and fauna was deeply familiar to him. Along the way, as the kid reacted to each new landscape with equal curiosity and delight, Din began to look up and soak in the views for himself: the vast salt flats and rippling grasslands, the blindingly blue lakes and eerie karst caverns. Being able to share these simple wonders with his kid makes him feel rich—even when they're scraping by on the last few ration bars.

Din pilots the Crest towards the mountainous ridge that traverses the continent. He skirts the tourist areas; he’s also wary of landing somewhere where the roar of the engines or weight of the Crest might trigger an avalanche. At last he finds a snow plain between two peaks where he can set down. From above, the splendor of the snowy crags had been obvious, but here on the ground, dwarfed by the mountains, it’s truly sublime.

The other Mandalorians don’t seem terribly interested in marveling at the view. They wrap up Din’s kid and their own foundling in blankets before they let them venture into the crisp white field.

Before long, the two children have thrown off the blankets and thrown themselves into making snow angels. They play until their cheeks are rosy.

Seeing the two young men standing off to the side, laughing as their teeth chatter beneath their helmets, Din squats and casually grabs a gloveful of snow, compacting it into an icy missile.

The resulting snowball fight is short but fierce. At one point, one of them even manages to stuff a handful of snow down Din’s cowl. Afterwards, the Scipio Mandalorians happily conclude that they never need to see snow or ice ever again.

“How can people live out here? They’re so exposed,” says one, referring to the chalets clustered in the tourist area they’d flown over.

“Unnatural,” the other one mutters. “Always on the verge of sliding down the mountain. I would have nightmares about it every night.”

“A warrior fights on all terrain,” Din admonishes them. He shouldn’t have to remind them.

His HUD pings. A final terse message from Cara pops up: “ _Boarding freighter w/ Xora now. See you at_ _Pantora_ _._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aruetii – foreigner, outsider  
> ad’ika – kiddo  
> riduur – partner, spouse  
> beroya – bounty hunter  
> tiingilar – spicy Mandalorian stew


	7. Deliveries

Cara sits with Xora in the hold of the afternoon freighter to Pantora, surrounded by row after rows of carbonite slabs hanging from the low ceiling. The young Mandalorian is one of the very few “warm” acquisitions on board. Cara can’t do anything about the regulation requiring all acquisitions to wear binders during transport, but she reasons that there’s no harm in surreptitiously loosening Xora’s restraints to make her a bit more comfortable.

Before releasing Xora back into her custody, the Guild doctor at the med bay had talked Cara’s ear off, explaining how their medical droids had managed to repair the placental seal without surgery. Then she had loaded up a datapad with nutritional advice and exercises to help increase Xora’s chances of carrying her pregnancy to term. Cara had nodded and promised to pass the information along to the client. Did it really matter that the girl would soon be delivered into the arms of a tight-knit tribe, not a lovelorn husband? Xora herself had been listening very carefully—she was determined to keep her pregnancy on track, and all prenatal advice was welcome.

The freighter rumbles as it shifts into hyperspace, causing the rows of carbonite slabs around them to ripple and sway. Cara eyes the tanks of liquid carbonite on the far side of the hold. For the life of her, she can’t recall what she’s supposed to remember about securing them.

For the first time, Xora addresses Cara directly. “The beroya really trusts you.”

“Beroya?”

“The hunter. The one who provides for the Tribe.”

Cara’s sigh is a gusty one. “He and I have been through a lot.”

There was a long silence before Xora spoke again. “It’s unusual. To trust aruetii—outsiders.”

“But won’t Mandalorians have to trust outsiders, eventually?” Cara finds herself asking the same question she’d put to Din. “If you—when you re-establish a homeworld?”

Xora makes a sound of uncertainty.

"Well, I hope your kid doesn’t spend her entire childhood cooped up in a covert,” Cara says emphatically. “Kids need sunshine. And speeder bikes. And, you know, libraries and stuff.” She pauses. “This is just my opinion. Don’t mind me and my aruetii nonsense."

Xora softly imitates Cara’s pronunciation and then laughs.

"What? What’s wrong with how I say it? Ai-rooo-ee-tee?" Cara distorts all the vowels to make Xora flinch. "How do _you_ say it?"

"Ah-roo-AY-tee."

"Ar-ee-OO-tay,” Cara says brightly. “Nailed it."

Xora chokes on her laughter.

Cara claps her on the shoulder. "You rest up. I’m going to find the pilot and pester him until he snaps."

The pilot turns out to be pretty affable. He’s happy to answer all Cara’s questions, and they agree to grab an ale on Scipio the next time their schedules align. She’s in a good mood when the freighter touches down at Pantora’s spaceport.

After walking Xora out and getting her settled on a bench, Cara directs the unloading of the carbonite slabs and tanks as she double-checks the transfer designations—most of the frozen quarry have another shuttle hop or two before they reach their destination. The work takes longer than she expects. Meanwhile, Xora appears to have succumbed to another nap, judging by her slack posture and the way her head is lolling forward.

As Cara finishes up and walks over, Xora suddenly startles awake. Her hand presses firmly on her belly and she gives a reproachful tilt of the helmet downwards.

Cara winces sympathetically as she tries to imagine being jabbed and kicked from the inside. “Do you need some food or water? Or the refresher?” she asks. Xora declines the first two, but admits that she needs to relieve herself. Cara walks her over to the spaceport employees’ refresher and waits outside the door. She scans the docking area and wonders if Xora’s “husband” has already arrived. Only a few human males are nearby, but they all seem to be spaceport staff or busy working on nearby ships. She’d forgotten to ask Din what their fake client looked like—because she assumed he’d be here to facilitate the introduction.

Where the hell is Din? He’s never this late.

By the time the Razor Crest docks nearby, their section of the spaceport is relatively deserted. The Crest’s ramp lowers. Din descends, followed by Yellow Helmet and Orange/Green. The two children trail behind.

Just then, another man emerges noiselessly from the shadows on the other side of the dockyard. As he approaches them, Cara’s hand drifts towards her blaster.

Din, on the other hand, does not seem alarmed. Instead, he bounces a small bag in his hand—clinking with credits—and gives the stranger a curt nod.

Ah, so this is their “client,” Dunnel Hro. Cara gives him a once-over. The mercenary is armed with two blasters and at least two knives. He’s built like an overgrown boy, but his face is rugged, with traces of several long-healed scars.

“Thanks for helping out. I’m the bounty hunter,” Cara tells him. “This shouldn’t take long.”

The man, Dunnel, looks at her—and keeps looking. At first, Cara thinks he’s fixated on the starbird tattoo on her cheek. She meets his gaze head-on with a challenging frown, but his eyes are so steadily mournful that it starts to unnerve her. She turns to Din and flicks him a “Can you believe this guy?” look.

Din shrugs and ... _did he just make an impatient gesture with his hand?_ Something flares inside of her, but she sets her jaw and pushes it down.

“All we need to do to confirm delivery is to scan the chain codes of client, hunter, and quarry,” Cara says out loud, but she doesn’t get much in the way of reaction from anybody. The giddy, conspiratorial energy of this escapade, such as it was, seems to have evaporated. _Who am I even talking to?_ she thinks. _Everybody just wants this charade to be over._

Dunnel complies with all of Cara’s instructions without saying a word, as if it never even occurs to him to speak to her. He doesn’t ogle her breasts, he doesn’t smile wolfishly, he just follows her face with his eyes as if his life depends on it. It’s making her very self-conscious.

Turning to Xora to scan her chain code, Cara swears when she realizes that the other woman’s hands are still cuffed. “Sorry, let me get you out of those,” she says, reaching for the release mechanism.

Suddenly, the sound of several sharp explosions ricochets nearby, causing everybody to startle and reach for their weapons. Din and the other Mandalorians draw to cover the two foundlings as well as Xora, whose holster is empty. Cara, her hands full with the datapad and binders, ducks as she fumbles for her own blaster. Looking up, she almost laughs when she sees that Dunnel—brandishing both his guns—has moved to shield her.

Around her, everybody remains tense as they scan the area to assess the danger.

Then three maintenance workers wielding wrenches run across the yard towards the noise and smoke. “Unbelievable!” one yells. “That’s the third fucking time this week!”

“Mechanical issue,” another worker calls towards their group as he jogs past them. “Damn docking clamp servos.”

One by one, the blasters go back in their holsters. Then, as if unable to hold himself back any longer, Orange/Green throws his arms around Xora, murmuring something inaudible. She nods quickly and pats his back. Yellow Helmet hangs back as he waits his turn, but the towheaded foundling jumps forward to hug Xora’s leg.

Cara watches them for a few seconds, then nods at Dunnel. “So I guess we’re done here.”

The mercenary reaches up to catch the bag of credits that Din has tossed at him. Giving Cara a final glance, he pockets the money and walks off quickly.

She watches him until he has disappeared back into the shadows. “That guy. Not what I was expecting,” she says to Din. “He doesn’t get out much, does he? Or was all of that just mommy issues?” She gestures vaguely towards her face.

“I’ll take it from here. You don’t need to worry about this anymore,” Din replies.

Cara balks. It’s not his words as much as his tone: brittle verging on dismissive. He’s been half-turned away from her this whole time, as if he can’t wait to leave.

It all feels very abrupt, like she’s being sidelined. She had just managed to connect with Xora … and now she’s being waved off: go away, go home. Her mind churns. What would it even mean to see this through? Accompanying them to the covert would be unthinkable.

Anyways, she reminds herself, the Mandalorians still need her to collect the reward from the Guild so that the beskar can be returned to Xora and the others.

Nope, it still feels inconclusive. Maybe that’s why she hears herself making one final attempt to make Din see her side.

"Look, about earlier: I assessed the risks and I acted. I feel like I’m being punished for trying to do a good deed.”

"You didn’t consult,” Din retorts. “You just charged ahead. There might have been another way."

“Sure. Okay. In the future— _if time permits_ —let’s have a long conversation exploring options,” Cara replies, but her chest is tight with resentment. This is maddening. She knows full well that plans are improved by collaboration, so why does agreeing with him feel like some massive concession? The irritation floods upwards until it spills over with a hiss. "You make unilateral decisions too—you put yourself in real danger. The next time you try to dogfight a fucking TIE Fighter armed only with a jetpack, can we huddle and confer beforehand? Or should I just shame you for it afterwards?" Her arguments are jumbling together, but she keeps going. “Why are you the only one who gets to keep secrets?”

“That’s different. I need to protect—”

“Protect your tribe, your people. So anything less than life or death is fair game?” Her voice has become a growl. “I don’t need you to second-guess me. If Xora and her baby survive the birth, it was worth it."

His gloved hands flex and clench as he mutters something in Mando’a.

 _He’s cussing me out,_ she thinks. _Calling me the worst thing Mandalorians can think of._

Din turns back abruptly. “Xora and her child—their lives are important. We agree on that.”

“Go. Get them to the covert.” She gives him a slight shove towards the Razor Crest. “Be back at Scipio tomorrow by noon. I’ll meet you at the park right after I claim the beskar from the vault.”

She turns towards the other Mandalorians and takes a deep steadying breath before giving them a tight-lipped smile. “Good luck with everything.”

They nod. The Razor Crest takes off.

The Guild freighter is not scheduled to return to Scipio for a couple of hours. Meanwhile, various transports full of carbonite blocks arrive at the spaceport to be loaded into the ship. Cara performs her duties restlessly. The intermittent arrivals make it impossible for her to venture too far away. If only she had time to find a local fight club and knock out some sneering brute. Instead, she walks around the shipyard a few times, and kicks a few heavy things that are not bolted down—and a few that are.

Hours later, back on Scipio, she heads back to the inn, sets her alarm, sets another alarm, gets drunk, and falls asleep.


	8. Case closed

As Qoo affixes the official seals to the paperwork verifying that the candidate for Guild courier has successfully logged at least two provisional escort runs, Cara looks around the deputy guildmaster's office. It’s spare and trim, but there are some mysterious bas-relief carvings hanging on the wall. She can’t tell what they’re meant to depict.

Qoo’s voice startles her. “I noticed that you managed to squeeze in a hunt in between your courier runs. A bit unusual.”

“It popped up not long after I arrived,” Cara answers. “Looked real easy—the quarry was right here on Scipio. Seemed a shame not to take it.”

Qoo rests her chin on her fist, smiling that enigmatic smile.

The words keep spilling out of Cara’s mouth. “The family’s reunited. The unborn hybrid is safe.” The Guild had been reimbursed in full for medical care, transport, and processing fees. _Nobody got defrauded. Everybody came out even,_ she reminds herself.

“Not to mention your own reward for the hunt. All that beskar!” Qoo says mildly, watching Cara’s face.

“Ridiculous, right?” Cara laughs loudly. “So much beskar.” She pats the box that had been released to her—just minutes ago—from the Guild Vault.

She’s halfway out the door before she turns back. It has been a long time since she’s had somebody that she really wants to impress. “I’m not planning to make a habit of it, Qoo.”

“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Qoo replies smoothly. “You’re escorting the afternoon freighter back to Nevarro? Say hello to Greef for me. It was good seeing you, Cara—don’t be a stranger.”

Because he expects to be back at the covert by evening, Din’s plan had been to leave his ad’ika with the Tribe for the day, figuring it would be a good opportunity for the kid to bond with the other Mandalorian foundlings. But he fails to factor in extra time for minor tantrums, and in the end, he sets out later than he had hoped to. He makes good time on the trip to Scipio, but he encounters heavy traffic in orbit and has to wait for a docking berth at the spaceport. The delays pile up. By the time he arrives at the park across from the Guild offices, he’s actually only a few minutes late, but the morning has left him irritable.

As it happens, Cara is not at the agreed-upon spot. Nor is she responding to his comm attempts.

Another few minutes pass.

Still no response from Cara.

An insane thought crosses his mind. _Could she have taken the beskar?_

He’s flooded with shame for even thinking it.

“No,” he says out loud. “Impossible.”

Using his HUD, he spots her tread on the ground, but he can’t track her because there’s too much foot traffic. Looking around, he does notice that several shopkeepers are mopping up spilled fruit and other goods. He approaches them and shows them a hologram of Cara, asking if they’ve seen her or anything else suspicious. Most raise a querulous cry about property damage but several mention a chase, pointing him in a northward direction. Din breaks into a run.

As he approaches a warehouse, he picks up the unmistakable sounds of a firefight. He hears a deep voice, taunting. "Come on out, Cara Dune. You weren’t so shy yesterd—”

Cara’s blaster shot clips Niroq in the shoulder, causing them to stagger in a half-spin—

—only to face Din, who drops them with a shot between the eyes.

Blaster aloft, he scans the space—“Anybody else?”—but the only sound remaining is Cara’s ragged breathing. He sees her drop her blaster, crouch down against a crate, and lower her head between her knees, breathing deeply into her cupped hands.

“You okay?”

Cara nods, hard. Her heart’s still pounding. She points to a small box. “Your beskar’s over here.”

Din listens grimly as Cara explains how she had been ambushed by Rheen and her friend Niroq. Seconds after she emerged from the Guild offices with the box of beskar, they’d sprayed her with some kind of gas. As her heart rate exploded and her vision narrowed, she had the presence of mind to keep a death grip on the box, even though doing so hindered her from fighting back. She had somehow led her pursuers into the marketplace, shoved them into vendor stalls, and—in the commotion and chaos—slipped away. As she ran, she scanned the streets for a less-populated place to take cover and hope that the effects of the gas would dissipate. It had taken her several blocks before she stumbled upon this empty warehouse. Rheen and Niroq had tracked her there a few minutes ago and that’s when the blasters had come out.

Din helps her to her feet. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“Yeah, just give me a minute.” The dizziness from standing up—she closes her eyes and ends up leaning against him to steady herself.

His next words are heartfelt. “Cara, thank you. For safeguarding the box.”

She frowns. “Din, it’s _beskar_ ,” she says, as if explaining it to a child.

“I think Rheen ran off once you arrived,” says Cara, nudging Niroq’s body with her boot. Her heart rate has finally returned to normal and the blur in her peripheral vision has almost completely disappeared. “But I guess we underestimated how much she wanted this beskar.”

“How would she have known when you’d be retrieving it from the vault?”

Cara thinks for a moment. “She must have been monitoring the case online. Once it closed, she knew I’d be back soon to collect payment.”

Something’s niggling at her. _Monitor, online monitoring ... wait a second ..._

“The fact that Rheen was able to grab our gig just seconds after it appeared in the queue … is probably not a coincidence,” she says slowly, as the facts line up neatly in her mind. “I think she had a keyword alert too—just like you.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Meaning that she was hellbent on acquiring not just the beskar from this gig but any beskar. She said something about a payday, so she’s probably not in it for the armor itself.” Cara’s voice gets low. “Din, think about it. Who, aside from Mandalorians, is obsessed with collecting every scrap of beskar?”

Din straightens up. “You think Moff Gideon is pulling the strings?”

“Or some other anonymous buyer who’s paying above market rates.”

“Maybe the beskar could be used as bait. To draw out Gideon.” Din’s fingers tap against his cuisse.

“Do it quietly, and maybe you can find him before he finds you again. He’s made it his life’s work to desecrate Mandalorian culture. Stands to reason he’d be collecting beskar via small-time scum.”

“They’ll be putting an alert on Rheen for attacking a fellow Guild member,” Din replied. “Is it worth chasing her down to see if she’s connected to Gideon?”

“Doubt it. If she were close enough to know who we are to him, we’d still be shooting our way through Imps right now.”

Din opens the box and gazes at the armor plates. They're stacked neatly and the beskar gleams underneath the paint. The Guild Burser—or somebody else at the Vault—had apparently given each piece a quick polish.

“Could we fake another Guild bid to use as a sting?” he wonders out loud, but he sees Cara shaking her head ruefully.

“No, think about it,” she says. “A client would need to actually pay up in beskar—as in, _relinquish_ it—or else they’d be blacklisted. It would definitely raise suspicions.” If anything like that were traced back to them, expulsion from the Guild was all but certain. Cara had been congratulating herself on their stealth in pulling off the Xora “heist”—right up until she realized Qoo had known about it all along.

“Look, I just started this gig,” she says with forced joviality. “Give me a chance to get tired of it before they take it away from me.”

Din closes the box carefully. “I didn’t realize you liked courier work that much.”

A bit reluctantly, she explains, “I’ve been told that Guild Courier can be a steppingstone to Guild Agent—if I want it to be.”

“You’re gunning for Greef’s job?” Din says, surprised.

“No,” she replies automatically. “Probably not. Just trying to keep my options open.”

The last few months of stability on Nevarro have been good for her, Cara knows. Not having to constantly look over her shoulder and assume the worst of every new acquaintance … Now she’s wondering how it might feel to put down some roots and start rebuilding something for herself. Anyways, it feels right to say no to Din. To draw a line.

“I’d been getting a little restless,” she tells him, “but this courier gig will let me get offplanet on a regular basis. I might even start picking up a hunt or two. I haven’t decided yet.” Her chrono beeps. “Speaking of which, there’s an afternoon freighter bound for Nevarro that can’t leave without me. But first I need to report this firefight to my contact here in the Guild. Guess I’ll have to explain this dead body too.” She lets out a long sigh.

“Sounds like a hassle,” Din says. “If I’d used my pulse rifle to disintegrate him, you wouldn’t have to file any reports.”

“That's OK. Maybe you haven’t noticed, but I’m very respectable now.” Cara means it as a joke but it comes out of her mouth less glibly than she’d intended.

“Hmm,” is all that Din says.

She narrows her eyes. “Possibly too respectable to trawl the underworld for beskar scavengers.”

“Does that mean I shouldn’t call on you for help in the future?” he asks slowly.

“I didn’t say that.”

In the process of dusting herself off, Cara notices that her armor has gotten slightly dented. She’ll have to get that hammered out. “So Rheen turned out to be a double-crossing, beskar-thieving, profiteering sleemo,” she admits.

Din shrugs. “Nobody’s perfect.”

Her startled laugh ricochets in the empty warehouse. Then she sighs. _No more justifications._

Turning to Din, she says simply, “I’d do it again. If you don’t like thinking about it, don’t pry.”

“Cara—”

“I’m not reckless,” she says firmly. “You have to trust me.”

He tucks the box of beskar under his arm, and motions for her to follow him out of the warehouse. Cara’s heart sinks. _He won’t even pretend to agree._

As they round the corner, he stops short so abruptly that she crashes into him. “I brought the other Mandalorians to the snow peaks,” he says. “That’s why we were late to the meeting on Pantora.”

Cara has no idea why he’s telling her this.

“You said that Scipio was famous for its mountains, and I thought they deserved a chance to experience something new—before they went back underground.” His voice gets quieter. “They needed to see it.”

Cara blinks. “Wait, this was yesterday? After the—”

“While you and Xora were finishing up with the doctor.”

She gives him a long look. _In other words, in between us yelling at each other … and then yelling at each other again._

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense,” she says evenly. “Did your Mandalorian brothers enjoy the scenery?”

“Somewhat.” His palms flip upwards of their own accord. “Not really,” he admits.

 _No surprise there_ , Cara thinks. They start walking back towards Guild headquarters. “How about your kid? Does the cold white stuff freak him out too?”

His head dips and he can’t hide the fondness in his voice. “My ad’ika loves the snow. He likes all of it, really. Everywhere we go, he just wants to explore.”

“Lucky for him he gets to see the galaxy with you.” As they walk, she shoots him a sidelong glance. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll be the one to unite your clans and rebuild the homeworld.”

A true chuckle from Din. “Or maybe he’ll settle for heading up the Mandalore Tourism Board,” he says wryly.

She looks around. “Where is he, by the way?”

“At the covert. I’ll pick him up when I drop off the armor.”

“And then?”

“And then the new pucks will take me to the other side of the Rim. I’ll probably turn them in to a Guild Agent out there. There’s a lead about a Jedi temple in the Altora system I’ve been meaning to chase down,” he says.

They pause at a busy intersection and wait for the speeders to pass.

“Sounds like our paths won’t be crossing for a while,” she says, leaning forward to scan for oncoming traffic.

He tilts his head. “I’ll be back on Nevarro soon enough.”

“If you say so. You seem to keep yourself pretty busy,” Cara replies. She’s taken off her gloves to flex her fingers. “For all I know, you’re raising hell with ex-droppers in every spaceport from here to Coruscant.”

There’s a long pause before he speaks.

“I don’t have anyone else like you, Cara.”

Her eyes flicker away. She studies the trees in the distance—and allows herself a deep breath. She turns back to Din.

“Come here, you jerk,” she says, as she pulls him into a tight hug.

* * *

Several weeks later, Cara gets an encrypted holo message from Din. To her surprise, there’s no audio.

The flickering blue image shows Din’s floppy-eared foundling gently patting something. A bundle?—no, it’s a swaddled infant being rocked against an adult’s shoulder. The infant’s eyes dart about. Her tiny mouth gapes as she drools onto a very familiar-looking pauldron.

The visuals last for about ten seconds before fizzling out.

Cara sets the message to loop, allowing the soundless recording to play over and over again. Then she finally reaches over and very gently shuts it off.

**Author's Note:**

> ad’ika – child  
> k’olar – Come here! Get over here at once!


End file.
